


Ad Astra Per Aspera

by Prefiera_de_Gryfalco



Category: Interstellar (2014)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 20:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2594834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prefiera_de_Gryfalco/pseuds/Prefiera_de_Gryfalco
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having outlived everyone who mattered, Cooper has nothing left.   </p><p>Completed one shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ad Astra Per Aspera

She would be gone very soon.  

He ducked out of the hospital room, trying to suppress a choking sob and avoiding the curious gaze of his dozen younger descendents.  He wiped the corners of his eyes in equal parts bittersweet pain and pride as he swept through the corridor.

Gone.  His untameable flame was to be finally extinguished. 

He had known Murph only about a tenth of her natural lifespan, but she had always been close to his heart. He saw in her a mirror of himself, if even more onery and intelligent. His wife Erin would be immensely proud of her. But she too was long gone for decades and decades. Cooper reflected that her bones had surely turned to dust many years ago on their family farm back on Earth, returning their stores of calcium, phosphorus, and other minerals to the ground from whence it came.

His wife, his daughter, his son, his father-in-law. All gone. The curse of near immortality to outlive all those you love.  And here he was on this confounded eponymous space station comfortably orbiting the second largest heavenly body in the solar system.  He had to muse a bit at the appropriateness of all that, as Saturn was named for the Roman god of agriculture and time.  

For the time being, humanity's future was not as perilous as it had been when he had first left Earth.  But what was he to do?  They already told him he would never fly again.  He was too valuable as a mascot of the success of the NASA program.  Simply too risky.  Get back to farming?  Not likely.  He remembered how well that worked out even on Earth. At least he could see the stars come out on the farm as he finished up his chores for the day on the evenings where the dust storms weren't too bad.  After the sun set beyond the foothills of the Colorado Rockies, the heavens spread out before him calling their siren song.  Here in the station sitting in this tin can, he felt the same frustrating trapped feeling in him just under the surface.

In the station, he could barely see more than a little glimpse of the cosmos at a time out of one of the windows. Seemed like an awful waste of space. It left him more morose than he would have been otherwise as he longed to leave. He knew himself well enough to know that the cagey feeling that would only be satiated with one thing.  Which was, of course, logically absurd as the mission nearly killed him. By all accounts, he should have died.  He should have thanked his lucky stars that he made it out whole and been content to receive the praise and accolades until his dying day in his recreated farm house or perhaps venture back on Earth if there was much left there at all beyond the dusty old bones.  

But the pull to leave got stronger as he regained his own strength.  The physicians and nurses ran a myriad of tests on him and treated him like frail stained glass from an archeological dig instead of a man with a body still in his forties.  Fascinating but fragile.  The other inhabitants of the station spoke to him with great honor, deference, and perhaps even a little fear, and yet a slight note of bemusement at his mannerisms and speech that of course matched someone at least half a century older. He did not say so, but he resented it, dammit.  Cooper tolerated the patronizing attitudes towards the ancient space cadet on the outside, yet something inside of him bent just a little bit each time and was threatening to break.  

He went back to his quarters and knew as he gazed out the porthole window into the black that this was not his home.  Not now and not ever.  Out there amongst the stars was his home.  And she was out there somewhere as well with billions and billions of celestial bodies between them.  She was there alone having found her way.  Even Murph had said so with her parting words to him.  He must go back.

The small craft was simple enough to commandeer for his purposes.  Cooper was impressed with the fact that his original journey to the wormhole had taken about two years while his daughter's final trip had taken just a few weeks.  Certainly technology had improved over nearly a century.  However, without the wormhole's help, this was going to be a complete suicide mission.  Fortunately it was still assisting in the effort to act as a portal to data gathering.  The signal from Edmund's planet appeared to be solid after years of silence.  Brand was out there and he must find her.  At least, that's what he told himself. 

In the end, he left, but not for her.  Not even for other such noble, altruistic purposes like the gathering of data and furthering mankind's understanding of space and whatever was beyond the infinite.  He left because at heart, he was a wanderer and always would be.  There was nothing left for him here.

The cockpit of the Ranger opened and he settled his 124 year-old body in the captain's chair.  While the controls were a bit more advanced than in his day, once a pilot, always a pilot.  He taxied the craft out of Cooper Station and headed straight for the wormhole.  As soon as he cleared the wormhole, he locked in the coordinates for Planet Edmunds and set himself up for hyper sleep.

*****

A small sad smile on her face, Amelia faced Cooper and nodded. It was time.  

When she first arrived on the planet, the small outpost was still mostly functional, but her lover was not.  His lifeless form was remarkably well preserved due to the dry conditions.  She buried him not far from the outpost thinking he would want it this way. She mourned for Wolf Edmunds, though she had grieved for him long ago knowing the likelihood of him being alive were slim to nil since the signal had died out years earlier.  When Cooper returned, she was nearly forty as far as Earth reckoning went.  As a biologist, she knew a certain clock was ticking. 

Brand had completely given up on ever seeing another human not derived from a Petri dish. She was nearly as inconsolable as Dr. Mann as she dropped to her knees as he exited the craft after landing. They rejoiced at their reunion. Cooper cheerfully worked at continuing to set up the outpost with Brand.  They got the incubators, centrifuges, reagents, and all necessary laboratory equipment to start up plan B. They shared meals and told stories of their previous lives that were almost infinite light years away.  They tended the nascent plants in the greenhouse, explored the surface of the planet on foot and on the small craft Cooper arrived in, and recorded and transmitted data back to Earth about their activities. 

But as time went on, they skirted around the issue.  As far as they knew, they were it. Marooned by choice with only each other. He had never loved anyone romantically after his wife's death and she was still grieving for a relationship that had ended with Edmunds's departure over a decade ago.  They had their share of emotional baggage to be sure.  But they knew that one day, the space station and the final stand on Earth may fail.  And then what?  Plan B seemed to be the focus for now.  But ever the pragmatists, they tentatively agreed there was no reason a smaller version of plan A could not be started if they expected to be alone for the foreseeable future.

She was wearing nothing but a sheet tucked around her torso like a bath towel. He wore the same sort of sheet tied about his waist as he entered the room. She shivered slightly in the cool air of her quarters.  They had initially decided to forgo any precursors and make the process as clinical as possible, as if this were a simple but slightly unpleasant medical procedure.  In and out and done, as it were.  Just like the visits to the prospective planets were supposed to be, she thought ruefully.  

He chuckled in the way only Cooper could chuckle when she asked if he would mind providing a semen sample to see if his sperm cells were still viable, but he went along with it willingly enough.  Surprisingly, travel through wormholes, blackholes, and uncountable light years had not affected his cell counts. In charge of the plan B set up, she had been tracking her own fertility for weeks.  She had been babbling nervously to Cooper about the LH, FSH, estrogen, and progesterone levels all needing to be just right. 

"Have some faith, Dr. Brand.  Mankind has done just fine in this regard with very little attention paid to the specifics.  That was how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place.  Besides, I'm an engineer.  We'll figure it out." Cooper said brightly. 

She laughed a little too long with the nerves but stopped when she saw his plaintive expression in his face.  

"We could still do this with a turkey baster or something," he said with a boyish grin.  He paused and looked her in the face.

"It's not too late if you'd prefer that," he said softly. "Or to just stick with plan B."

She opened her mouth about to cite the studies in humans and animals that artificial insemination would be fine if this made him uncomfortable.  She was about to give him an out completely and that they could just proceed with plan B and they would simply adopt the offspring born _in vitro_ as their own.  She was about to lose her nerve and stride right out of the room when he closed the space between the two of them and claimed her slightly agape lips with his own.

She just froze for a moment with her eyes still open, not quite trusting her reaction.  As he tentatively enveloped her with his arms, her eyes slowly closed and she gave way to the sensation.  Wolf would always been in her heart, but Cooper could be as kind as he was handsome.  She knew there was no reason they could not make the best of an awkward situation and allow themselves a small measure of pleasure.  Cooper was less polished than Wolf, but more enthusiastic.  So typical of a cowboy pilot.  She tentatively ran the tip of her fingers over his back and moved to his arms and chest.  His build was solid and efficient.  Not wiry like Wolf, nor atrophied and gone to seed from years in hyper sleep like Mann.  His warmth was inviting in the cool air and she pulled him closer as she deepened the kiss.  

He did not love her, at least not yet in that way.  Nor did she love him.  But it was their duty:  the arranged marriage of Adam and Eve on this brave new world. And perhaps like arranged marriages on Earth, feelings beyond collegial affection would grow in time.

"Not so bad for two people who have lived about a quarter millennia combined," she whispered as she let the sheet slide down.

"Through hardship to the stars," he murmured in her ear as his own fell to the floor.

 


End file.
